Indore (Madhya Pradesh): ‘The city witnessed an unprecedented political turmoil before and during the Lok-Sabha election when two former MLAs of the Congress joined the BJP and in a rare incident, even the Lok Sabha candidate of the Congress withdrew his nomination, quit the party and joined the BJP. This situation disappointed and frustrated the committed voters of Congress, who preferred to abstain from voting. This resulted in a sharp decline in the polling percentage of the district in the ongoing Lok Sahba Election’, said a former IAS officer, who was posted as collector and district returning officer of the district for a long time. He was talking to this correspondent on the condition of not quoting his name.
He was asked to explain the possible reasons for the sharp drop in the voting percentage, despite Indore being the highest literate district of the State. As per the preliminary figures, the district has seen a sharp drop of about 7.57% in the voting percentage as only about 61.75% people exercised their franchise compared to 2019 figure of 69.32%.
The former IAS officer outrightly discarded that the reason for the low turnout of voters was high temperature. He pointed that the same kind of high temperature was there in 2019 as well.
‘The primary reason for the sharp decline in the vote percentage is the political developments before and during the process of Lok Sabha election whereby many Congress leaders quit their party and joined the BJP in bulk. Though they changed their faith easily, their supporters did not. Moreover, they did not have any alternate Congress candidate to vote for. This situation generated frustration and disappointment among them. This resulted in many of them avoiding to cast their vote. On the other hand, the voters of BJP were confident of victory for their candidate. Thus many of them refrained from voting,’ he added.
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